"Nah-- wouldn't matter even if it was." Technically it wasn't the same direction he needed to go in, but fifteen minutes was pretty quick. It's hard to call it out of his way when it isn't going to cause a big inconvenience, regardless of whether it would result in any backtracking.

"That's not too bad for a commute. Always nice when you don't have to travel far to work." Some people had pretty awful ones, easily exceeding an hour.